TODAY

Since 1972 I have managed the Lapin Agile and have endeavoured to safeguard the heritage of French song through the cabaret form and, above all to promote new talent, thereby continuing Paulo's tradition.

THE BEST TRAINING.

Cabaret as a forum for expression is the best school in which to train artistes,writers, composers and performers. In France, there is great artistic potential in all these fields; the proof lies in the number of auditions requested by the young artistes of Paris and the provinces who wish to perform in public. As the Quebecois author Doris Lussier writes in Le Père Gédéon: "The cabaret is an art school of the highest value. There are no teachers as in the conservatory, but there is a public who teach you the things that you would never learn in the big professional schools. The best teacher that an artiste can have is the public. That is true and has always been the case. For the cabaret, however, it is particulary true, because there the public is uninhibited. By that, I mean it is not mesmerised by the slightly stiff atmosphere of conventional theatre. Here we are at ease and can let our hair down. We express spontaneously what we are feeling and applaud or whistle without embarrassment or constraint." The Lapin Agile is the perfect definition of the artistic cabaret. Everyone, artiste and audience, combines to form a company to cross the time barriers.

They take pleasure in singing together old provincial songs and discovering unknown artistes -- poets, writer-composers, musicians, humorists and singers. Next